Post #86 – Women’s Memoir Writing, ScrapMoir – Matilda Butler and Kendra Bonnett
Women’s Memoirs is pleased to present the the fourth award-winning contest entry that we’ve published today. Earlier we published a three-way tie for First Place in our April memoir contest – APRIL MEMORIES category. Now, we hope you will join us in congratulating Kathleen Hewlitt the first-place winner in our APRIL BIRTHDAYS category.
SIXTEEN APRILS
Kathleen Hewitt
She came into the world to applause and deep joyous cries of women saying, “Welcome, welcome!” My Aprils would never be the same again.
I had known she was coming. So many mornings, I opened the windows of the room to the scent of new life after a musky, warm spring shower. The white wicker rocker would hold our many first nights together.
Her linens were pale cream and an Irish blanket laid in wait.
The arduous winter with so much snow exhausted me until the melt of March.
I was a woman I’d never met carrying this girl. I felt sensuously maternal, confident and beautiful. My entire being was aroused. My cheeks were as pink as the tiny dresses I hung in her closet. I lived each day with feminine yearnings and thoughts, as though I were being born, too. I wonder if I hadn’t been told that I held a tiny girl inside of me, if I would have known anyway.
Her stirrings within me gave me creative life and I wrote and wrote until I fell asleep with pen in hand.
I was already the mother of little boys and soccer balls and hockey skates. Days and days of earthy play and the soothing and loving of boyish things was what I knew.
Their sweaty foreheads and chocolate eyes kept me breathless and grateful.
Kissing them goodnight and wanting them in the morning already, I prayed that I could be everything for a girl. I worried that I wasn’t enough.
It took her two full days to make her entrance. I spent time on all fours on a cold hospital floor, breathing, rocking, swaying and waiting. A midwife rubbed my back with warm oil and we laughed because she said she felt my baby’s foot. It didn’t matter to me that women had birthed for all time. I felt as though I was part of a primal miracle.
The pain on that unforgettable April morning brought me strength and faith in myself that I had never known. I met parts of me for the first time.
I climbed onto the fresh bed and I pushed my only daughter into this world. Her father caught her and placed her on me, our bodies covered in blood and sweat. And we looked into each other’s eyes and amidst the nurses’ rousing ‘ Happy Birthday’ singing, I whispered, “Welcome, Kathryn. I’ve been waiting for you. I love you.”
Sixteen Aprils have passed with Kathryn and she never knows what it’s really like for me to look into her green eyes, the same as my own. She is a better version of me and a girl I keep wanting to know. I feel the celebration and the faith and love of that spring morning almost every day.
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